Affirmative action is the nation's most ambitious attempt to redress its long history of racial and sexual discrimination. But these days it seems to incite rather than ease the nation's internal divisions.

An increasingly assertive opposition movement argues that the battle to guarantee equal rights for all citizens has been fought and won and that favoring members of one group over another simply goes against the American grain.

But defenders of affirmative action say that the playing field is not level yet and that granting modest advantages to minorities and women is more than fair, given hundreds of years of discrimination that benefited whites and men.

What is Affirmative Action?

Born of the civil rights movement three decades ago, affirmative action calls for minorities and women to be given special consideration in employment, education and contracting decisions.

Lord Dahrendorf Deutsch: Ralf Dahrendorf 2003 Sven...

Affirmative Action Pricing

Affirmative action

Institutions with affirmative action policies generally set goals and timetables for increased diversity and use recruitment, set asides and preference as ways of achieving those goals.

In its modern form, affirmative action can call for an admissions officer faced with two similarly qualified applicants to choose the minority over the white, or for a manager to recruit and hire a qualified woman for a job instead of a man. Affirmative action decisions are generally not supposed to be based on quotas nor are they supposed to give any preference to unqualified candidates. And they are not supposed to harm anyone through reverse discrimination.

But blacks/ minorities and women have been segregated for years so don't get me wrong they absolutely deserve their chance to get jobs. a 50 year old white male's perspective think affirmative action was a good...

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6 pages185May/20044.0

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